Created by: X  

Heaven help me! Posted on 10/16/2008 4:27:00 PM

I feel the shakes starting again. They never really left me. I try to put it out of my mind, but it is almost always there. An itch that yearns to be scratched. The anxiousness, the tension, the need to walk through the fields of Nagrand, to soar on a majestic Golden Gryphon, to curse at my pet whom I named "Retard".

Yes, if you have not already guessed or clicked on the above links I am referring to World of Warcraft. I have never felt such a deep sense of loss when I stopped playing that game. It's been six months give or take since I said my goodbyes. I guess living in a virtual world for six months straight will do that. I have never felt so drawn into a game world as much as I have in wow. With so much to see and do, I miss being there. Living it, loving it, hating it.

As I am writing this I can hear my brother playing wow in the next room. He has just recently renewed his account. He tells me he needs someone to play with, and to quest by his side. I can hear the clashing of swords, ogres grunting, steel blades impacting on shields.

But I hesitate, as much as I yearn to join him in glorious battle. To visit new places, and rejoin old friends, and guild mates. I know that if I renew my account, it will surely consume me. Countless hours will turn into days, then weeks, then months! I know I will only be be able to pull my self away just long enought to eat and sleep. My dreams will be full of ideas, places, and experiences that I will long to explore.

The new expantion pack Wrath of Lich King is drawing near. Should I or should I not renew my account. I find myself torn in two directions, between addiction and a sad emptyness.

Heaven help me! I have just clicked the complete purchase button ...


Running out of time Posted on 8/26/2008 10:58:23 PM

I am running out of time before I go mushroom picking to try and upload my new website. And rather then trying to do a rush job of getting it up and running I am going to delay it and take my time to do it right. So that means I will have to try and get the new site up and running some time in November.


Home at last Posted on 8/15/2008 9:16:46 PM

Just finished unpacking from my trip to Enderby, BC for a family reunion. My aunt and her husband purchased some property along the Shuswap River, about halfway between enderby and Mabel lake.

I pretty much got the asp.net gallery web control complete and will be organizing my 1000+  4 megapixel images so that when I switch over to the new site the gallery will be full of images.


Enderby Posted on 8/5/2008 2:08:54 AM

Will be heading to Enderby, BC tomorrow for a family reunion. Should be there for about a week. I have finished porting all of this sites content over to my new BlogEngine.NET based website, but I am still fiddling with the code for the gallery. So with any luck in around a few weeks I will replace this site with the new one.


Finnally! Posted on 7/7/2008 10:51:23 AM

Stupid asp.net password system got messed up some how and could not log in to this site. Grrr.

Anyhoo, just making a post cause I have not made any recently. I am still working on my zider project and am making progress but as usual progress is very slow going. I have not felt like programming this last week and have only wrote about a dozen lines of code.

I have also been working on moving the content from this site to a new site I am setting up. The new site will use Blogengine.net to power it.


Little shop of horrors movie review Posted on 6/8/2008 6:22:44 PM

I'm not going to review just any new fangled movie that has come out recently, oh no, I'm crankin the way back machine to the year 1986! Don't run away screaming just yet, you will defiantly want to check out Little Shop of Horrors!  Staring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin, James Belushi, john candy, and bill murray to boot!



So unless you were born after 1978-ish you may not have seen this movie gem. To start off it's a musical! NO NO Don't run away! it's a musical comedy! Yeah thats right, this movie ain't no gone with the wind. It's funny and the songs get seriously stuck in your head big time.   

With such memorable lyrics as ...



The movie starts off a little slow but continue to build and build to the climactic ending. It is just as good now as it was way back when it first came out. You should defiantly try to remember to pick it up next time you are in the video store or better yet netflix or zip.ca it.

This is the kind of movie they just cant make any more! (my opinion)  The acting is what you would expect from the cast except I found Ellen Greene's voice she played a bit out over the top but still good. 

But I think the best part of this movie is that there are no cgi effects just puppeteering! And dam is it good! It is hard to think of how they pulled off some of the puppeteering work in this movie cause it is very very well done and a testament to the fact the excellent work can be done through puppeteering instead of cgi all the time.

There is just so many great things going for this movie you should really check it out.  The steve martin and bill murray dentist scene, the alien plant trying to bite a ladies butt, steve martin snorting laughing gas, and the last musical number with the plant "I'm a big green mutha from outter space and i'm bad"!

If you have not seen it in a while it's worth watching again, if only to have the songs stuck in your head!     I've got steve martins dentist song stuck in my head right now! I give this movie a 9/10!

My boy, I think someday
You'll find a way
To make your natural tendencies pay
You'll be a dentist


Status Report Posted on 5/18/2008 7:20:26 PM

Have not had much time for coding since I have started helping my parents build there house. But I have written a few more lines for my Zider Game Engine project. You can get the new bits from the CodePlex site here. I have been thinking about making some videos showing off my progress so far, but have not gotten around to it yet.

I have also broken my wow addiction and have not played in like over two weeks. I swore up and down I would not buy that game, but then my brother bought it and con-ed me into getting it. The frigging thing cost my like $150+ CAD after I bought the game and then had to buy a six month subscription. Not to mention I had to buy the burning crusade expansion two months after my subscription started. Ridiculous amount of money for a game that you can only play online!

I'm kinda glad my account is expiring at the end of the month though, because it gives me more free time to work on my coding projects. WOW does so many things right but it totally spoils it by turning around and doing so many things horribly wrong. it was an intense six months of learning how NOT to make a game!

Any way just thought I would make a post so people know that I am still alive and kicking...


Wiimote headgear Posted on 3/31/2008 1:42:16 PM

Headgear

After seeing what Jonny Lee had done with the Wiimote desktopvr software I decided to write up a quick article on how to create your own wii headgear so you do not need to use the wii sensor bar. You can read the article here.


Shwing! Posted on 2/23/2008 2:41:14 PM

The xna team just announced on Feb 20, 2008 that they will be finally making it possible to publish your home brew games on xbox live.

But wait that's not all. They are also bringing the xna platform to the ZUNE!!!  Un-freaking believable!!! Two thumbs up! WAY UP!


You have to check this out Posted on 2/15/2008 7:42:53 PM

As I was looking on the neat for ways to hook up my wiimote controll to my bluetooth laptop I came across Jonny Chung Lee's wii projects page. In a word
 it's freaking awsome! Ok that was more than one word but still you should check out the amazing possibilities that are cheap to implement and make you realize just how much more versatile a wiimote can really be. Click here to visit the site.
 


The Last Mimzy Posted on 1/29/2008 2:42:22 AM

I just finished watching The Last Mimzy again and I have to say that I think this movie truly re-captures those feelings I felt as a kid watching movies like Back to the Future, The Goonies, and Explorers. It holds that same sense of adventure. So if you were a kid in the 80's remember to check out The Last Mimzy the next time you are in the video store or renting a movies from Zip.ca or NetFlix.


RPG objects Posted on 1/28/2008 7:19:22 PM

I have posted a RPG objects example application on the projects page. The example code was written so that I could use it as a thinking tool. It implements a very basic RPG item system. Click here to get more info.


New projects page added Posted on 1/22/2008 7:56:23 PM

I just finished adding a projects page to the site. You can find it here as well as the xImageSV image browsing application.


Added a draw string code snip to the xna page Posted on 1/22/2008 6:06:25 AM

This xna code snip allows you to draw text, with the option of having that text word wrapped to the specified rectangle or you can specify text alignment info like weather or not the text should be drawn anchored to the bottom right of the rectangle or top right etc.

    public enum TextAlignment

    {

        Top,

        Left,

        Middle,

        Right,

        Bottom,

        TopLeft,

        TopRight,

        BottomLeft,

        BottomRight

    }

        public static void DrawString(SpriteBatch sb, SpriteFont fnt, string text, Rectangle r,

          Color col, TextAlignment align, bool performWordWrap, Vector2 offsett, out Rectangle textBounds)

        {

            // check if there is text to draw

            textBounds = r;

            if (text == null) return;

            if (text == string.Empty) return;

 

            StringCollection lines = new StringCollection();

            lines.AddRange(text.Split(new string[] { "\\n"}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries));

 

            // calc the size of the rect for all the text

            Rectangle tmprect = ProcessLines(fnt, r, performWordWrap, lines);

 

            // setup the position where drawing will start

            Vector2 pos = new Vector2(r.X, r.Y);

            int aStyle = 0;

 

            switch (align)

            {

                case TextAlignment.Bottom:

                    pos.Y = r.Bottom - tmprect.Height;

                    aStyle = 1;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.BottomLeft:

                    pos.Y = r.Bottom - tmprect.Height;

                    aStyle = 0;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.BottomRight:

                    pos.Y = r.Bottom - tmprect.Height;

                    aStyle = 2;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.Left:

                    pos.Y =  r.Y + ((r.Height / 2) - (tmprect.Height / 2));

                    aStyle = 0;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.Middle:

                    pos.Y =  r.Y + ((r.Height / 2) - (tmprect.Height / 2));

                    aStyle = 1;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.Right:

                    pos.Y = r.Y + ((r.Height / 2) - (tmprect.Height / 2));

                    aStyle = 2;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.Top:

                    aStyle = 1;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.TopLeft:

                    aStyle = 0;

                    break;

                case TextAlignment.TopRight:

                    aStyle = 2;

                    break;

            }

 

            // draw text

            for (int idx = 0; idx < lines.Count; idx++)

            {

                string txt = lines[idx];

                Vector2 size = fnt.MeasureString(txt);

                switch (aStyle)

                {

                    case 0:

                        pos.X = r.X;

                        break;

                    case 1:

                        pos.X = r.X + ((r.Width / 2) - (size.X / 2));

                        break;

                    case 2:

                        pos.X = r.Right - size.X;                      

                        break;

                }

                // draw the line of text

                sb.DrawString(fnt, txt, pos + offsett, col);

                pos.Y += fnt.LineSpacing;

            }

 

            textBounds = tmprect;

        }

 

        internal static Rectangle ProcessLines(SpriteFont fnt, Rectangle r, bool performWordWrap, StringCollection lines)

        {

            // llop through each line in the collection

            Rectangle bounds = r;

  &nb